


The Post-Death Experience

by anysin



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, Ghosts, M/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-07-17 11:04:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16094378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anysin/pseuds/anysin
Summary: In A Better World scenario, Stan drives off the road and dies. A Stancest ghost story.Halloween Bonus! In "Once And The Future Thief", Stan has been brought back to life.





	1. Chapter 1

Stan has barely come to terms with his own death when he hears a car arriving to the scene, and of course it’s fucking Ford.

“Stan, no!”

“No at yourself!” Stan covers his face with his hands, and to his surprise the world behind a shield of hands is just as dark in death as it is in real life. He doesn’t know if he finds it comforting or not, so he drops his hands, watching as Ford stumbles down into the ditch, to the crumpled remains of the Stanmobile and Stan.

“Stan, please be alive-”

“Come on, you know I won’t be.”

Ford doesn’t listen, and by the time he’s leaning against the Stanmobile and peeking inside the car, Stan has turned away, hoping his hands are at least better at muffling sound so he doesn’t have to hear Ford scream. They aren’t.

*

Even as a spirit, Stan keeps trying to leave Gravity Falls.

He can’t.

Stan tries walking. He tries boarding the bus. He gets into people’s cars. It all ends the same way: the moment he closes his non-corporeal eyes, he finds himself back in the front of Ford’s house. It gets old really fast, but Stan keeps trying, until he gets tired.

“This better not be your doing,” he says to Ford before he braces himself and steps through the front door.

Walking through a door doesn’t feel like anything, which is almost disappointing, but what he sees beyond the door makes him pause. Ford’s house is somehow both tidier and messier than it was before and there are candles everywhere; that combination freaks Stan out a little. He has to venture deeper into the house to find Ford, and to his relief Ford isn’t in the basement with his weird machine.

It’s less of a relief to find Ford in a room with Stan’s mangled corpse.

“Ford, what the fuck?”

Stan is not sure how much time has passed, but he thinks he should be rotting fast by now. The corpse in the container, however, looks relatively fresh, even though it’s still obvious it has been in a car accident. Stan looks at the corpse long enough to check if you can tell an autopsy has been done to it before he has to look away, feeling sick and shaky.

Part of him wishes he could faint while dead, but even if that was possible, he knows he needs to keep it together. He has to figure out what the hell Ford is doing.

Right now, Ford does nothing. He just sits by the container, staring at Stan’s corpse in silence. Ford manages to be stoic for a while, but it doesn’t take long for his face to start crumpling, and that’s when Stan needs to look away again.

“I’m so sorry, Stan.”

Stan wishes he couldn’t cry while dead.

“I wish you hadn’t been there,” Stan whispers, even though he knows Ford can’t hear him. “I had no papers on me. I could have just been a John Doe. You never had to know.”

“I’ll make this right, I promise.”

“What?”

Ford closes the container, standing up from his chair. Soon enough, Stan figures out what he means.

*

“It won’t be long now, Stan.”

“Shut up.”

Stan can’t believe that one can do things like this with magic. He is looking down at his own corpse again, a corpse that looks completely unharmed now, barely even dead. Stan could just be sleeping there, ready to wake up any minute.

There has to be a catch to this. There is no way bringing someone back to life is this easy. Something is going to go horribly wrong, he just knows it.

“Maybe we’ll see each other again already today.”

“Hopefully not.”

Of course, Stan is lying. Of course he wants nothing more than to reach out for Ford with his flesh and bone hands again and pull him close.


	2. Once and the Future Thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Resurrection isn't all that. A Halloween extra.

Stan doesn’t know what’s strong enough to start him awake during the night; not many things are these days. What keeps him awake, however, is the solid, muscular arm that is wrapped around his torso, pressing down on Stan’s soft belly in a way that should bother Stan. But Stan barely feels its weight, or that there is an arm pinned against him at all.

He has had a lot of trouble with sense of touch, lately.

Grimacing, Stan decides he needs to get out of the embrace. Try turns out to be the keyword, as simply getting himself to move turns out to be a huge effort, much less slinging the unwanted arm off of him. But he manages it eventually, and even later on he manages to roll over so he’s facing the person holding onto him.

He looks at Ford’s sleeping face, at the peace on it; despite Stan’s anger, he is relieved over the sight. During the last few months, he has realized that Ford has been under a lot of pressure with some opponent whose name he still refuses to share with Stan, who can apparently break into a human mind. They should be safe now - apparently a lot of horse hair helps against mental invasions - but whenever Ford isn’t busy babysitting Stan, he is busy trying to figure out a way to destroy this creature, and whenever Stan isn’t too busy being a complete wreck of a human being, he supports Ford in that endeavor. It feels good when he gets to do that. It’s like he’s useful again.

He doesn’t think he’ll get to be that much more in the future in any other aspect of their lives.

“I told you it was a bad idea,” he mumbles now, sighing to himself.

Stan was dead, and now he’s alive again. That is the insane part, but what isn’t insane is that it of course had some heavy consequences, and that nobody but Stan himself was hit by those consequences. His body is in one piece, everything is in its right place; nothing works right. His mind, too, is there in theory, everything is still intact; it just keeps tricking Stan, making him think he’s doing something when he’s actually not, slipping away from his reach when he needs it. Ford has no real explanation for it, only a half-assed solution.

“You can’t leave,” Ford says every time he catches Stan thinking about going away, because Stan usually never makes it to the actual going away part. “You can’t take care of yourself anymore, Stan. That’s my duty now.”

It’s a duty Ford has taken on without a complaint. The fact Ford has done that fills Stan with gratitude and love, but also rage; this is not right, for the either of them. Stan should have stayed dead and buried, he should have never arrived to Ford’s place at all, they should have never met again. It’s not right that Ford has to sacrifice fucking everything just because he didn’t want his burden of a brother to die, and Stan shouldn’t have to drudge on in this miserable existence, praying for the day he kicks the bucket for real. 

Except he really doesn’t do that last thing, now does he? Because despite everything, he still wants to be with Ford.

It should comfort him that Ford wants that on some level too; otherwise Ford wouldn’t have bothered with any of this, wouldn’t keep bothering. But as Stan looks at Ford’s face now, knowing the peace on his features will be lost to chaos and despair soon, he can’t help but feel like the worst of thieves.


End file.
